


the incredible loudness of being

by sugarybowl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Annoyed Arthur, Denial of Feelings, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 03:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: Eames was an incredibly loud person, this Arthur knew.





	the incredible loudness of being

Eames was an incredibly loud person, this Arthur knew. It wasn’t a matter of keeping a well moderated inside voice which was requisite in the acts of thievery and seduction through which he made his livelihood. No, Eames’ voice could fall to a whisper so soft it could slip into a mind’s narrative, leaving Arthur to reach helplessly into his pocket, hand diving for the promise of consciousness.

It was never a matter of decibels with Eames it was just, he was so goddamn loud. His car - be it a pornographic sports number, a decrepit van, or an unassuming sedan – always announced him a mile off with a rumble or a roar or a coughing fit of dying exhaust. His clothes, invariably, were ostentatious affairs of swirling greens and shades of yellow more suited to careless stains than intentional dyes. Most alarming of all was his breathing. It permeated the serenity of the moments before a job with a heavy constant flow. Air in, air out, couldn’t Eames do anything in sensible humble silence?  

“Arthur,” a needlessly quiet voice whispers. He finds Ariadne’s face drifting between amusement and concern.  “Are you ready?”

He nods, once and curt. Nearly imperceptible. Arthur isn’t in the business of causing waves or grand motions. Just enough and no more, he reminds himself, it’s the only way to survive in this world. Maybe that is what makes everything about Eames so baffling. How in the hell could he survive not just in this business but among the immensity of dangers that life held in store, while he was stomping his way through it.

“Dream a little bigger, darling,” Eames says between laughs, two levels down.

This time it’s a tank he’s dreamt up for them – a monstrosity to the sensible armored van Arthur had set in place. Ever since Fischer, Eames has decided to use the little catch phrase whenever the opportunity presented itself. When it didn’t, he presented the opportunity himself.

It grates at him the presumption, the reminder. Eames loves to mock his fear and his caution as if Arthur’s fear and caution didn’t keep them all alive regularly.  _I’m the reason you walk loudly into other people’s worlds_ , he wants to tell him,  _I’m the reason the stage is ready for you to play your part as bright and distractingly loud as you can._

Eames won’t stop staring at him when they wake and Arthur decides there is a loudness in that as well. How is he so blatant, he can’t help but wonder, how can he be so brazen and obvious and still be the astoundingly gifted forger that he is?

“You’re angry with me,” he says, voice level and yet, even at that volume it reverberates in Arthur’s head.

“Why would I be, you’ve done as good a job as I expected,” he says, “and I thought you were very convinced I had a resting bitch face last time we met.”

“I was. You do. And this isn’t it,” he says, crowding shamelessly into his space, “you aren’t annoyed or pretending to be annoyed or begrudgingly impressed or even frustrated that you’re pleased.” Eames lists these as if they were well catalogued items that he’d checked for and dismissed in turn.

“You’re angry at me and I want to know why,” he says, voice composed and undoubtedly curious. “Is it something I’ve said?”

“No.”

“Is it something I’ve done then?”

“No.”

“Well that what is –“

“It’s just the way you are,” Arthur hisses, “it’s just everything you are – alright? It’s infuriating. You infuriate me. I thought we had established that ages ago.”

Eames scans his eyes obviously, loudly, all over Arthur’s face. He looks at him the way he looks at files and photographs, with some Sherlockian gift of teasing out the most Freudian wisps from the flat figures of the marks that were placed in front of him. When he finally looks away – casting his eyes away from Arthur’s in what he counts as a small bitter victory – his crossed arms move closer and higher up on his chest.

“Alright,” he mutters, “I guess if that’s all it is then.”

He barely notices the tantrum Ariadne is throwing somewhere to the left of them, just a flurry of slammed papers and a withering stare. It’s drowned out in the cacophony of Eames’ exit, from the rustle of his jacket to the tinkling of keys in his hands to the way his steps echo on the way out of their work space. All of it is deafening.

A month later when they meet again, Arthur can’t help but reach to his ear and snap softly, checking for damage caused by gunshots or his infernal surround sound system. The crack of his fingers sounds crisp and right and so he moves on to his next theory. There is a mute button to Eames and someone has pressed it.

It starts when Eames startles him, not in the way he’s so fond of by sliding up to his desk too swiftly or knocking him off an inadvisable tilt to his seat. Eames startles him by simply quietly being there, on time and without so much as the roll of an engine pulling up. Arthur wonders somewhat dumbly, if Eames has walked all the way to this old hangar today.

It takes him a minute to notice, which speaks volumes on to itself, that the shirt Eames is wearing today is grey. It covers the distracting contours of his decorated arms and nearly melts into the dark grey of his trousers. It cuts a fine figure on him, to be sure, if one takes a minute to discern it from its homage to a clouded sky.

In a moment of genuine and unexpected panic, he wonders if Eames’ breathing will be equally muted. He stares in undisguised concern as the rest of the team goes under just to see if his chest rises and falls with it. He finds that it does, with the same unmistakable hum of inhalation and exhalation that drove him up the wall before. What’s more, in what can only be stress driven delusion he thinks he can hear that steady unwavering thump of his heart. Yusuf doesn’t ask if he’s okay when he comes over, he only pushes Arthur back in his chair and stabs the needle in with practiced and bored ease.

Inside the dream, an Ari produced landscape of hallowed halls and walls made of books, there is no sign of him. Of course, Eames is here to do a job just as the rest of them, and his job is to fold himself into the dream and the body of their mark’s brother to tease out whatever it is that brother otherwise took to his grave.  

Eames doesn’t tease him to dream up anything more than what Arthur deemed necessary, or grin too widely, or call him darling. Just as it should be for a job perfectly done, it could be reasonably argued that Eames wasn’t even there.

When they wake Eames’ eyes fall on him. That too, Arthur finds, is still loud as ever. He doesn’t approach or corner, doesn’t demand that Arthur throw his mind open even after he’d only just been there. He simply watches, in distressingly audible silence.

Arthur feels childish of a sudden, and a spoiled child at that.  _It’s too loud_ , he whines at first. Then with the same petulance he huffs _, it’s too quiet_.

When Eames does walk up to him, he says not a word at all. Arthur is once again infuriated. It’s only this time he can properly identify that all along he’s been furious with himself. Because Eames drives like a maniac, certainly, but it’s nothing to the way Dom abuses his breaks. His shirts are obviously atrocious, but Yusef regularly wears novelty sandals to work. There are other things, however, that make him embarrassed. Glances don’t make noise, Arthur chastises himself, and there’s nothing in Eames’ lungs to make his breathing louder than anyone else.

“I shouldn’t have,” he starts, “what I said it wasn’t –“

“You thought perhaps it’d be easier,” Eames says, his eyes focused on the stretch of his hand on the table, “if I were just a little less.”

“Yes,” he says quietly, admitting in one word the existence of an ‘it’.

Eames closes his hand to hold it in a loose fist and doesn’t take his eyes from it.

“How did you like it?”

“I hate it,” he says, a smile breaking embarrassed and desperate across his face, “I can’t stand it.”

“Dare you say you find it –“

“Infuriating,” Arthur finishes, trying to save some dignity amongst all of it.

“So what then,” he says, too softly. So softly Arthur has to strain his ears to hear him. All his maddening thoughts fall into place right then and he knows, of course, what then. Nothing then.  _Just walk loudly into other people’s worlds,_  he wants to say,  _play your part as bright and distractingly loud as you can_.

“So then,” he says, louder now than he normally allows himself, “as you were, Mr. Eames. Just exactly as you were.”

**Author's Note:**

> *throws self into a new fandom with no preparation* HAI, I'm new to these two, appreciate all feedback!


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